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Map review of Alamo
by dunkelschwamm | February 27, 2022 | 3948 characters
So, the map is a Heart of Evil map I gather with a bunch of new shit added to it. Because of that, it takes the form of a Vietnam war style scenario but with alien attacks added.
First off, the brushwork is great. Heart of Evil was a pretty primo mod to begin with, but it's been too long so I can't quite remember any of this from the original mod. That said, still: the urban warfare is felt in collapsing buildings and intricate brushwork mixing heaps of debris with crumbling architecture. The textures chosen are all very appropriate too.
The gameplay in this map is a bit strange. I'm not entirely sure I followed how we won. This is the best I can figure: we pushed straight forward against an onslaught of soldiers and enemies, found a building, skittered all over the building until we found a way out on a far end and began walking through military encampments and ruins, killed everybody arduously over a lot of time, and then a bunch of monsters and zombie soldiers and apaches spawned and then we were spawncamped until we basically cleared the whole map out a second time and then found an airplane and left. That's the map.
Throughout you're often fighting soldiers and snipers, which makes sense for the scenario. There's also an osprey early on that makes life hard for you unless you dedicate the time to taking it down. When the second wave of monsters hits you'll see a lot more spongey headcrabs and bullsquids which make the map a lot more frustrating. Those three apaches also had a nasty habit of encircling the area leading right out of spawn, thereby spawnkilling my teammate and I every time we'd respawn. For this reason especially, but also for the massive swarms enemies come in generally, I would say this map would be best played with many players.
To deal with the enemies, players are given all of the workhorse weapons right out of spawn: all the handguns, the MP5, shotgun, and M16. The players are also given plenty of ammo to use them, and throughout the map pick up heavier firepower with more situational usefulness.
There's a great trick this map uses a bunch of times where there's turrets on an APC type thing full of ammo which the players can sneak around and explode from the inside, instantly disabling the turrets. I found this really fun, though the first time took a while to realize what needed doing and my teammate and I just kept shooting at the turret. There was a situation later with a really cool looking tank that we ended up having to battle by crowbarring most of the way because we had a hard time locating and damaging its hitbox using firearms.
Overall the map is pretty fun, with a few glaring issues in the way. I think the issue caused by the apaches is enough to drop this a whole letter grade it's so bad, and the meandering and uncertain nature of the map makes it one that I just meandered in without much thought or planning.
If you're looking for an action map to play with friends, make sure you have enough friends to deal with how much will be thrown at you. If you host a busy action server this will probably make an excellent choice for your rotation.
Pros:
- Good weapon selection
- Tons and tons of enemies made for intense fighting
- Great brushwork and textures
- Fun vehicle enemies
- Level felt very long and expansive
- Shortcuts open up :v
Cons:
- Some enemies later on especially are just annoying to battle
- The apaches spawncamping was a really big problem
- The map was never really super clear in what our objective was or where it was
- Layout is confusing and easy to get lost
- I didn't like that Ghosts n' Goblins bullshit this map pulled making me play it twice
Review originally from https://scmapreviews.blogspot.com/2022/03/alamo-dunkelschwamm.html
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